Have a great vacation!

I hope you have a great 2009, and I'll try to edge past the throng of fans'n'admirers to have my spoke from time to time ...

I see there's been some discussion of the Caro-Kann, aka <One of the Semi-open defences to 1.e4 which Fischer routinely chewed up>.

Actually, I can pinpoint the precise moment when I realized that I didn't understand chess and never would.

It was the 1970s, I was a teenager, fairly new to the game, and I knew diddly-squab about openings. Some time after the Fischer-Spassky match, however, I got my first chess book. Its name is lost to history, but it had the match games plus other earlier games played by Fischer, Spassky, Petrosian, Larsen, et al.

I dunno how <al> got in there.

Anyhow, one of the games - probably Fischer vs Petrosian - was a Caro-Kann. I can still recall staring at 1...c6 in total and utter bewilderment. I wondered if it was a misprint (I knew, vaguely, that something called the Sicilian existed, starting 1...c5 -- maybe it was really one of those?)

No such luck. I had to confront the awful truth, that top GMs played moves like 1...c6, that they made sense, that they involved actual plans for development and pawn structure (whatever they might be).

I should probably have quit at that point, all things considered. But -- if any <young folk> are listening in, and want an <uplifting moral> -- I stuck at it, 'got good' (or at least very slightly better) and in about two years I knew a wide range of openings and my rating had risen from zero to 2000. Well, to 1999, that time, actually.

But the song remains the same.

Stick at things and they'll stick at you. As Mr Greenaway might say, there is a sense in which people can also be regarded as things ...

So, um, stick at people, too, and they'll get fed up with you. But it'll be fun ...

Best imprecations,

It may come from the land of Borat, in its own sublingual way, but believe me: I've sat in on polyglot Euro-pudding star press conferences where the language level was much the same. Just not so funny.

I love the bit where she asks him about "cess" in the morning or evening. "Cess? What's that, cess?"
Maybe words like 'sex' really don't figure in the standard Mormon vocabulary ... or maybe the Osmond brain simply refused to believe that anyone could ask him *that* question.

It puts an interesting spin on the traditional Irish curse "Bad cess to you". I never knew what 'cess' meant - but now I know. Nothing strange there: another old Gaelic curse, <buineach ort>, translates as "May you have a laxity of the bowels". Concise, huh?

Autogram vs Sonogram: he caught on fast there. Probably signed a lot of sonograms in his day. And the way <een persmap> - the basic tool of the trade - turns into a 'present' rather than a 'press kit' is uproarious. Side-splitting on a large hadron scale.

"No, that was a keyboard". Ouch.

A lot of this <echt waar> going on, too, in various languages. Should we suspect post-interview activity? Or the belief on Donny's part that such action was, well, possible?

I love it. Dank u -- echt waar -- for the discovery of the Noughties.

<Dom> Glad you like it... I used to get quite embarrassed when watching a fellow countrywoman "do" these things to famous people. They all start watching their pronunciation really careful, want to be "helpful," like a language teacher, to try and make sure there are no further "misunderstandings" et al... heh

Yes, Miss van Dyke (Wendy van Dijk) is quite something. She's a multiple award winner, eg as Best Female TV Personality, overhere...

Actually she somehow gets her interviewees quite comfortable and candid, at a certain point, and in one episode she even gets Geri Halliwell to call the number of George Michael, and then gets up real quickly to snatch away her cell-phone! And gets away with it easily...

Wendy is actually a very cute woman, with shapely legs to say the least, and poor Donny might well have developed, um, feelings for her over the course of the interview, towards the end surely...

And why not?

Vanzelfsprekend! (Best sorta translated by "naturally")

Donny: press k-i-t

Mike Oldfield, the 70s muso who bizarrely made zillions with <Tubular Balls>, once released a vaguely Celtic-sounding Enya-ish album called Ommadawn. I doubt whether anyone got around to telling him what it meant -- he probably assumed it was about Celto-Buddhist mantras and sunrise.

Myles na Gopaleen aka Flann O'Brien -- who is one of the favorite writers of our gracious host <Jess>, who has serious good taste in these things -- wrote a story about a European gentleman, Herr Franz Huehl, who had a large collection of impressionist paintings. Those infamous con artists, Keats and Chapman, did a number on him -- and made off with one of his valuable depictions of a lily pond (sacred to us frogs, of course).

Well I never knew what was up there before. A few dust bunnies and a friendly spider. I don't know what he has to eat up there, but I named him <Frank> and I've been pretending he is my pal.

I promise to respond to all of the interesting mail you've all left for me here!! I read all of it, and even pressed on the links. But I can't remember any of it at the moment.

Luckily I'll be able to re-read it in a few days when I can keep my eyes open for longer than 20 seconds without fainting.

I will be better in a few days now, I think.

So I will answer all of your kind mail then.

I'm very sorry to hear of you present state of flu-like vegetation... I'm hoping that <"I will be better in a few days now, I think."> is indeed the omen in the futuristic soup! May it be sooner than later as well. :))

BTW: Also read your post just made over at Woody's "Chess N' Chat" house and that Smyslov quote (in my two poster there) was the one I was telling you about. This when you, Niels and I were having a fast and furious discussion (when isn't it fast & furious?) about the beauty of Chess! (Caissa RULES). Unfortunately, I couldn't find it at the time and had to substitute something quite mundane (just barley acceptable by my standards) in its place. :)

It quite rightly belongs here too...

____________________________________

<"A chess game is a work of art between minds, which need to balance two sometimes-disparate goals - to win, and to produce beauty."

- GM Vasily Smyslov>
____________________________________

I *luv* that Chess quote. :)

You get well soon! :)) We want you back in tip-top shape for our GAME! ;)

I'll spare you all the Chicken soup and drinking plenty of fluids routines...

Take care of Number #1 (that's you!). :^)

Your pal, - Mal

Okay, you may have to sac an internal organ or three, but think of the positional (and blood) pressure. Also, you'll be able to call yourself <Mrs La Belle Dame Sans Merci and various other bits>.

Be well, okay? At least you've got a USCF <Life Spider from Mars> to commune with.

David Bowie?

Did I actually recognize some lyrics you put up for once <Dom>!

Maybe I am coming down with something...

Happy 2009! I wish you the very best in this year.

I heard that <Jessica> participated in a tourney at a chess club in Seoul on 4th. I presume it was you? If so, how did you like it?

I hear that the Squab Flew is making the rounds. Apparently this happens when not fully braised.

In fact, did you notice him around anywhere before you started to become feverish? Like on your arm...

I would stay well away I think, especially if he does any weird glow in the dark stuff.

Frank might even be short for Francesca ...who has gone through many marriage break-ups, usually over dinner, and is now an emotional wreak.

I think you should go over to Frank and have a talk, find out what is what. Just take a broom over and ask if he would like to lend it, and then hit him hard enough to give him stars in front of all eight eyes, and flush away the evidence.

I too am under the weather and stuck at home at a very inconvenient time -- I HAVE to get outside tomorrow -- but used the time to surf the web regarding the UNlikelihood of chess being solved...

I put a few telling excerpts in an EMU that has found its way to your mailbox by now.

<Wood>: < Just take a broom over and ask if he would like to lend it, and then hit him hard enough to give him stars in front of all eight eyes, and flush away the evidence.> HAHAHAH - !!